


An Expected End

by melthedestroyer



Series: Stand aside, and breathe in the new life [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mosaic Timeline (The Magicians: A Life in the Day), Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28256097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melthedestroyer/pseuds/melthedestroyer
Summary: Quentin Coldwater, age 83, falls asleep in his bed in Fillory and wakes up at Brakebills in 2019, greeted by some old friends, who are just as surprised to see him as he is to see them.Eliot most of all.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Stand aside, and breathe in the new life [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131692
Comments: 26
Kudos: 220





	An Expected End

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be charitable to myself and say this story isn't so much "shamelessly cribbed wholecloth" as "in conversation with" and "a possible inversion of" Page161of180's story, ["To Give You Hope and a Future"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527407) , which is a hopeful but heartbreaking meditation on going forward in grief, and something I've re-read probably dozens of times at this point. I highly recommend it - go read it if you haven't.
> 
> The image of Old Mosaic Timeline Quentin meeting up with a Post-Season 4 Eliot has stuck with me, though, and developed into the story below. It makes some of the same points that Page's story does, which I think is inevitable given the similarity of premise, but departs in some key, much more self-indulgent ways. Especially in that this story is a fix-it, and Page's is not. Not to mention, can we ever really have enough stories about Eliot actually receiving comfort and catharsis after 4x13? I think not. I already wrote one, even. Here's another.
> 
> Thanks to [patrolka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla) for the beta and for being so very encouraging. Otherwise this thing would've probably stayed in my docs folder, unpublished, as an exercise in satisfying my own lizardbrain urge to Make It Better.
> 
> Thanks also to [oneprotagonistshort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneprotagonistshort/pseuds/oneprotagonistshort) for the alpha-read and the capslocking. And the loving me. That too.
> 
> Warnings for canon-typical death, suicide and afterlife stuff that were a little too fiddly to tag. But if you're concerned: it's ultimately a happy story. It's what they deserve, goddammit.

_And all of us are meant for the fire  
_ _But we keep on rising up  
_ _And walking the wires when we go below  
_ _To lose us in mourning_

Quentin Coldwater, age 75, buries his husband with the labor of his hands and a touch of magic where needed, gives the key - the fruit of fifty-some-odd years of life - to a little girl who was once his hero, has a bit of buttered bread for dinner, and decides he deserves to go to bed early. He will make the short journey to Teddy’s house and tell him the news tomorrow.

Quentin Coldwater, age 75, with no longer much to do in his empty house--no puzzle to solve, and no one to feed but himself--moves in with his son and daughter-in-law and rapidly growing grandchildren and great-grandbabies, and spends the next handful of years happy, helping where he can and being cared for when he can’t help himself.

One spring, when he’s 83, he kisses his youngest granddaughter good night, and goes to bed after dinner. He likes going to bed early now, despite having always been a night owl. Mostly because he’s tired a lot, but also so he can wake with the sun. He’ll sit outside and take his time alone to miss Eliot, the early bird of the family, who would be up at dawn and already gardening when Quentin would just be leaving bed. The cottage and the mosaic are not so far from here, barely a 15 minute walk through familiar trees, and sometimes he goes there to visit before the rest of the house wakes up. Less so, these days. The walk takes longer each time he goes.

So he goes to bed with the fading blue of dusk, as old men do.

He wakes to unfamiliar sounds and smells, on a bed that is not his own.

Except...it’s not entirely unfamiliar. The humming sound is air conditioning, isn’t it? What he feels beneath him is smooth, but with give--reminds him suddenly of nights half awake, either from too many cocktails or trying to stay up and study. The ceiling he’s looking at doesn’t give him much to go on, but it’s the plain offwhite of

Earth.

He sits up. It takes a minute, because he’s fucking old, pushing with his elbows and his hands.

TA DA, says the wall in front of him, in big marquee lights.

Heart hammering, he looks to his left, where three stunned figures are sat on a coffee table, staring open-mouthed and wide-eyed right at him.

Alice, with her glasses and her little dress and tights, and Julia, with her flowing hair and hooded eyes, both perpetually the young women they’d remained in his memory since he left all that behind.

And beside them, Eliot. But not an Eliot he knows, surely. This isn’t the prickly but gentle-hearted old man who had stood by him for decades, nor the High King of Fillory he’d been before that, nor even the boy he’d met at school - gorgeous and aloof and so very lonely.

He’s young, certainly, though Quentin can’t place his age. His hair is more grown out than his own Eliot had ever let it get, tied off his face but curling behind his ears. There’s a dark beard coming in that not even primitive razor technology had stopped his husband from shaving. He’s in one of his Outfits, vest and tie and sleeves and blazer and layers and layers of armor. 

All in black.

Weighed down with it.

There’s a cane at his knee (also black, topped with a silver ram’s head), and a sunken look to his eyes. He wears no ring except the one with the white stone, on his middle right.

Quentin’s immediate thought is that he’s dead, that his own little pocket of the Underworld had made sure three of his favorite people were there to greet him. Except...

Just to check, Quentin looks down. His own liver-spotted and wrinkled and callused hands greet him, as well as his beard and his Fillorian homespun trousers and wrap shirt that he’d fallen asleep in. His own wedding ring on his left hand, and Eliot’s on his right.

He looks back up.

“Okay, where am I?”

“Brakebills…” says Julia, sounding faint, far away, disbelieving.

“So...not dead, then. That’s something.” He shifts, slowly letting down one foot and then the other off the couch, to sit up and face them. “Alright,” he sighs, crossing his arms and giving them the Look - the one that still makes Teddy, a father himself, sheepish (and the one that used to make Eliot smirk and tease). “What did you do? Out with it.”

“Quentin…?” This, faint, from the Eliot who is not his husband.

“Yes?”

Blanching, Eliot stands, leaning on his cane, and walks out of the room as quickly as he can manage.

Quentin would follow, because - God, this Eliot he doesn’t know looks _devastated_. Like the only thing holding him up is the layers of black he wears. But he still has a lot of questions, and perhaps the girls will be more forthcoming.

He turns back to them, their twin stunned expressions meeting his wry one. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a long time. Now, you’ve told me _where_ I am. Would you mind telling me _when_? What timeline, too, I guess, since that’s a thing we have to worry about.”

“Timeline 40,” Alice says, having regained herself. “It’s 2019.”

Quentin takes a deep breath. “Well...I don’t know how you got me here, or why, but I have a feeling I’m not the one you were expecting?”

“Not...not quite,” says Alice, much more unsure than he’d ever heard her. “Where did we...take you from?”

“From my own bed, in Fillory, about 50 years ago, if my math’s right. It might not be, Fillory has a way with time I haven’t worked out. But...from my count, in 2017, Eliot and I stepped into Fillory about a century in the past, as part of the key quest. I got the time key, by the way. Margo should have it, if everything’s worked out.”

“Quentin...you and Eliot never went to Fillory for the time key. Margo stopped you at the last minute because...because she found it.”

“Fucking timelines,” Quentin mutters. “Well, _this_ Quentin did.” He looks up and around. “Where’s Eliot gone?”

The girls shrug. 

“Alright. You guys...use your genius brains to figure out what happened. In the meantime, I should probably find him.” He gets up, creakily, slowly. Julia, bless her, jumps up and he’s able to take her arm to go the rest of the way. Upright now, he smiles at her. “I missed you. Not sure when the last time you saw your Quentin was, but this one hasn’t seen you in fifty years. Give or take a few.”

She hugs him, burying her face in his shoulder the way she used to. 

“I miss you too,” she says, muffled.

Present tense...he’s not sure what to make of that.

They let go, and he leaves, shuffling toward the other half of the main floor. He hears Julia and Alice start discussing something with each other, but his old-ass ears can’t make out the words. Forced to take his time with the slowness of his movements, he admires the Cottage, the little changes, where it does and doesn’t match his memory. He does miss it sometimes - not as much as Eliot had; it was never his _home_ in the way it was Eliot’s. But it was cozy, and alive, with reading nooks and a stocked bar and full to bursting with magic.

As predicted, he finds Eliot behind the bar, at the kitchenette. He’s bent over the sink, so that all Quentin can see is a dark, hunched back, and the top of a hung head.

Quentin’s heart aches. It wasn’t so very long ago that he’d lost this man. They’d known it wouldn’t be long, that Eliot had lived too hard and that his health was going, that he was no longer strong enough to do more than sit in his chair and direct Quentin while he placed the tiles, but that didn’t make it much easier. And now he’s here, in front of him, young, _so_ fucking young, and so clearly hurting.

“Hey,” he says, soft as he can. Eliot upset required some delicate handling, but fortunately, Quentin is now an expert.

Eliot’s head whips up, startled. His face is bloodless, and his eyes very red. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Quentin whispers. “What happened?” 

He’d never been much for using pet names unironically (nicknames, sure, but nothing ever fit Eliot more than his own name) - but he’d learned sort of on accident, decades ago, that Eliot would absolutely turn to putty in Quentin’s hands at being called “sweetheart”. So it slips out, of course it does, even though this isn’t precisely _his_ Eliot, he’s still more or less the man Quentin loved for fifty years.

Eliot’s expression cracks, head bowing again, and Quentin goes to him.

He stands beside Eliot, rubbing his back as it shakes. He makes no noise, because - God, because he’d been taught as a child to cry his hurt out in silence.

“Hey, shh…” he soothes, feeling useless, eventually letting his palm settle on the back of Eliot’s neck, fingers brushing the long curls at the nape. “Alright…that’s it…”

Eliot composes himself quickly. When he stands upright, Quentin can practically see him reassembling himself, tilting his head back and squeezing his eyes shut and breathing and deliberately straightening his posture, and burying it--whatever it is--deep as he can.

It breaks his heart all over again, to see an Eliot who still needs to swallow the pain down.

“I think,” Quentin says, not wanting to interrupt the process but just _needing_ to say something. “You should make us both a drink and tell me what’s going on, hm?”

Eliot opens his eyes and looks down at him. He’s still a little wobbly around the edges, but actually smiling a little. “When was the last time you’ve even had a proper drink, old man?”

“Fifty years,” Quentin says. “Unless you count--”

“That awful plum wine I made? Yeah. No. That doesn’t count.” Eliot busies himself then, seeming glad to be put to a task, taking down bottles and glasses and a shaker, as Quentin works out this new bit of information.

“Okay… Now I’m even more confused.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Eliot says, a hint of dark humor to his tone that doesn’t sit quite right with Quentin. 

He goes around the bar, turning this over in his mind, and hoists himself up on a barstool - lucky his balance is still good. Eliot working is always beautiful to watch. Dextrous hands, confidence in the movement of his arms, the cocky quirk to his eyebrows despite his intense focus on the task at hand. Quentin used to love watching him cook.

After a series of muddling and pouring and shaking and peeling, Eliot slides him an amber cocktail with an orange peel and cherry in it, and one giant ice cube. Quentin sips it, and shudders.

It’s been a long time since he’s had whiskey. 

He takes another sip, and the sweet smokiness of the cocktail settles on him, gentling the initial burning bitter. It’s a good choice, whatever it is.

“It’s great. What is it?”

“An old fashioned,” Eliot says, focusing now on his own drink. It takes a lot less time, and appears to just be gin on the rocks with a slice of lime. 

There’s a not-quite-comfortable silence between them as they sit, sipping.

“So,” Quentin says after a moment. “It’s 2019. And you’re, what, twenty-seven?”

“Mhm,” Eliot hums into his glass.

“And you...know about my--our life? At the mosaic? Because Alice and Julia told me we didn’t go through. That Margo found it and stopped us.”

“We...um,” he says, setting his nearly empty drink down and speaking in that slow, gentle whisper he uses when something is hard to get out. “We didn’t go through. And then...later, a basket of peaches and plums were delivered to Whitespire. And...and we remembered. We remembered going through. Doing the mosaic. I think...I think you solved it. And that’s how the key got to Margo at all. I don’t know how, I...” Eliot swallows. “I was already dead, I think. We haven’t - we didn’t talk about it. After.”

“You didn’t talk about it,” Quentin echoes.

“Me and - you, this Q, I mean. I mean, we...did. But.” 

Understanding settles on Quentin’s mind. The one thing, the _one fucking thing_ that he and Eliot would truly fight about, from their late twenties to Arielle to co-parenting to middle age to bitching old men. That his beautiful, stupid husband couldn’t absorb, because the very...idea, the _concept_ that he could be loved, unconditionally, whether they were partnered together by a quest or not, didn’t fucking compute.

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Quentin groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jesus Christ, Eliot.”

“I don’t… What?” Eliot sounds confused. Quentin doesn’t blame him. Clearly this boy has no idea how much Quentin fucking knows him by now.

Quentin folds his arms and Looks at him. “You pushed me away. Didn’t you.”

“I--um.” Eliot stammers, looking heartbroken again, but also...guilty. He lowers his eyes.

The thing with Eliot...The thing with Quentin’s husband is that he’s a prickly bitch, he’s dramatic and combative and will scratch if provoked. He’s also fiercely loyal, protective, with a strong but tender heart, and far, far too willing to admit his own faults, to the point of being self-defeating about it. He will fight you about petty shit, about the color of the drapes and that day’s design and _Darling if I have to eat quail again for the fourth time this week I am sleeping outside, do not test me_ , but when truly in the wrong, when his faults are laid bare, he accepts it. Quietly, usually, too easily, with a resigned air that’s always far more frustrating than any argument. And then he will withdraw, stew, and spiral about it (in much the same way Quentin himself can, in his own way), until he hits bottom, and Quentin has to gently love him out of it.

Eliot the Husband and Father matured out of this. Eventually. 

Eliot the twenty-five-year-old, beautiful, kingly and infuriating, hadn’t had the time.

Eliot the twenty-seven-year-old, in widower black, hair and beard grown and barely groomed, using a cane that in Fillory he hadn’t needed until his mid-seventies, bent by a grief he will not name, has already hit that bottom. And no one seems to have been able to love him out of it.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I did.”

 _Where is your Quentin?_ he wants to ask. He knows himself, and he knows himself as a foolhardy, hopeful twenty-four-year-old, who would have accepted whatever rejection Eliot had given him, but would still have stood by him, holding onto that love all the same for...likely years. That feeling may never have even fully faded - at the very least it would have grown into something else for lack of feeding, like with Julia or Alice. But Young Quentin is a romantic, and too forgiving. Young Quentin would not have had to be asked twice to take Eliot back.

There’s something like dread at the edges of his senses. The look on all three of their faces as he sat up on the couch. How he was ”not quite” the person they meant to summon. Eliot in black, radiating pain in palpable waves. 

Quentin takes a breath. “Okay, well. How about you help me off this bar stool, we sit down somewhere, and you tell me what’s going on, hm?” Without meaning to, he’s using his Dad Voice, the one he used on Teddy when he was a moody teenager who refused to talk about his feelings.

“Jesus, sorry, I didn’t even think--” Eliot comes around the bar quick as lightning even with his cane, and Quentin only has a second to envy his youth and speed before Eliot’s right there, offering his arm and supporting his old joints on the slow way down. His hands are gentle, but sturdy. They always were.

 _His_ hands. That Quentin hasn’t felt in eight years, now.

“Such a gentleman,” he says, smiling up at him to hide a shiver of longing that doesn’t feel as much like missing him as it could. 

Eliot just looks embarrassed instead of responding, but they hold onto each other as they head to the fireplace. Quentin sits slowly on the end of the couch, and Eliot makes for one of the armchairs, but

“No.” Quentin pats the couch next to him. “Sit with me. Please.”

Eliot does, contrite. He keeps his head bowed, shoulders hunched as he settles onto the couch. Quentin reaches for his hand, and Eliot lets him take it, so he brings the hand to his lap and traces his fingertips over it. Eliot was always vain about his skin, lamented his wrinkles and spots and varicose veins, and Quentin can see why, now. It’s a stark contrast, their hands together: Eliot’s are beautiful, smooth but not paper soft like Quentin’s, and uncalloused by years of handling tiles. Graceful, steady, strong. 

“So. You pushed me away. How’d I take it?”

“You know you took it fine,” Eliot says, voice low and eyes still downcast. “We obviously stayed friends, just. I told you that it wasn’t us, if we had the choice.”

“ _Eliot_ , for the--”

“I _know_!” Eliot cries. “I did the fucking...soul searching, or whatever the fuck, about it, already. I know I was being a coward, okay?”

“Alright,” Quentin soothes, running his thumbs over the plane of Eliot’s palm. “So, you know it was a mistake. What have you done about it?”

“...Nothing.”

“Nothing. And why’s that?”

“Be--um.” Eliot swallows, words seeming caught in his throat. 

Quentin waits. It takes hours, days sometimes, for Eliot to talk about what’s hurting him.

“You. By the time I. Figured out my shit...A lot’s happened, okay? Since the quest, since everything. I don’t want to get too into it, it’s...I just can’t. But, the…You…” Eliot turns his hand in Quentin’s and threads their fingers together. “You died. We grew old together and then I told you to fuck off and then you wore yourself down protecting me from a literal Monster Demigod and then _died_ destroying it...”

As Eliot's words choke off and his hand starts to tremble, the puzzle pieces slowly fall together. This Eliot, this young, brokenhearted man, who is being so brave simply by opening his mouth and putting a name to his pain, lives in a world where the man he loves will never hit thirty, let alone eighty.

“ _Eliot_ ,” he breathes, and the man in question hiccups against a fresh wave of tears. “Oh, come here, sweetheart, come here. That’s it...” He pulls gently at his hand and Eliot comes, folding himself up and tilting until he settles with his head in Quentin’s lap, sobbing quietly.

Quentin loops his arm around Eliot's chest to hold him, tight as he can, and strokes his hair with the other hand, rocking and whispering comfort that will never be enough, eyes stinging.

The years-long grief of the old is a constant quiet ache that occasionally swells and floods over, like a river. The new grief of the young is an open, bleeding chasm that nothing but time will fill. And Quentin feels young, then, mourning not only his own Eliot, lost only these past eight years, but also the Quentin that this Eliot will never get to grow old with. A future-past-never-will-be-again Quentin, who both got to grow old and didn’t, who still wasn’t always certain on the whole “wanting to be alive” thing.

Quentin has time to let his own grief ebb as he continues to hold and hush Eliot as he cries, palm pressed flat to his chest. In recovering himself, he finds it’s honestly a little spooky as well as tragic, knowing that yet another version of himself died young and far too reckless. Being sad for a version of himself that didn’t get to live… That’s growth, he supposes. Not that his rampant garbage-brain mental illness ever went away, of course. It changed with his circumstances, morphed as he aged. But just, quite simply, it’s harder to be suicidal when you have so much to live for.

As Eliot begins to quiet down, Quentin leans back and carefully reorders the mess he'd made of Eliot's hair, smoothing it back and re-doing the tie on the top half.

“You were trying to get him back,” Quentin says quietly. “Weren’t you.”

“What?” Eliot says, muffled, wet.

“You and the girls plucked me straight out of Fillory and into the common room. But I wasn’t the Quentin you were looking for, yes?”

“Sort of?” Eliot sits up, and plucks a (black, of course it's black) handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mops his face up. “But we were...Q, we were...Um.” He turns, frowning, and takes Quentin’s hand in both of his. “We called in a favor with Hades. We were specifically looking in the Underworld for...for someone who could help us get to you, if we even could. We were expecting Penny, honestly, but...You showed up instead.”

Quentin sits with this for a moment. 

So. He's lived a long (but too short all the same), beautiful life, with a wife, a husband, a child, a purpose, adventure even, and grandchildren, and _great_ -grandchildren. He got to find out that magic was real. Got to step into Fillory with his best friend, and discover after a while that it was not just a disappointing version of his childhood fantasies, but a place where he could spend a life, and be happy, for years, and years, and years. No more secret doors left to run to and hide in. No need.

He literally couldn’t have dreamed up a better one for himself.

And then he'd fallen asleep in his son’s house at eighty-three, and had, in fact, died. So quietly he hadn't even noticed.

“I see.”

Quentin looks up to see Eliot’s eyes welling up again. “Oh, hey, don’t,” he sighs, and tucks a stray lock of hair behind Eliot’s ear. Eliot leans his cheek into Quentin’s palm before he can pull away, and closes his eyes.

Dear, dear man. The size of his heart, honestly. Far too big to have been broken so many times.

“You say you don’t know how we solved the mosaic,” Quentin says, brushing his thumb under Eliot’s eye.

“Yeah. You never told me.”

“It was us, Eliot. It wasn’t the pattern at all, it was _us_ , it was _our life_ . It’s a time key, Eliot, and what it wanted was _our time_ . The beauty of _all_ life. I found the last tile, a gold one, when I buried you eight years ago. Placed it in the middle of the puzzle, and there was the key.”

Eliot is quiet for a moment, eyes closed, digesting this. “Well, knowing _that_ would’ve saved us a lot of work,” he sighs.

Quentin laughs. “I dunno. It was a job to do. Something had to keep us busy.”

“Eight years ago?” he asks, opening his eyes.

“Eight years,” Quentin confirms, dropping his hand to hold Eliot’s again.

“How do you _do_ it? I - you’ve been gone barely two months, and we aren’t even _together_ , and I…”

“Well, I have our family. I went to stay with Teddy and the kids after, and they keep me busy and moving. And every morning, I go out to the garden to watch the sunrise and miss you.”

Eliot swallows, jaw clenching. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I left you to do it by yourself in the end, and that...I made you think I didn’t love you, after--after it all.”

“Listen, I was a foolish young man, but I wasn’t _stupid_.” Quentin squeezes his hand. “You said I protected you, and died doing it. You don’t think I’d have done that for just anyone, do you?”

“You do lots of things for people who treat you like shit,” Eliot says, bitter.

“Shit - _happens_ , Eliot. Everyone makes mistakes. Julia and Alice almost _killed_ me. Just because people fuck up doesn’t mean they don’t love you. That you have to stop loving them.” Quentin brings Eliot’s hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles. “I--or, _he_. He knows you love him. He might have tried to convince himself otherwise, to make it easier, but...deep down. He knows.”

Eliot nods, chin shaking.

“You’re trying to _save_ him. You might even be succeeding. What’s a better proof of concept than that?”

Eliot opens his mouth, looking stricken, but Alice and Julia call for them, then. With a sense of finality, Quentin takes Eliot’s elbow, and they walk slowly, arm in arm, arthritic shuffle next to a careful but uneven stride, to the main room.

“We figured it out,” Alice says. “You are actually the exact person to help us. Eliot, did you explain what we were trying to do?”

“More or less,” Eliot says quietly, not letting Quentin’s arm go.

“I’ve got to find him. Your Quentin,” he guesses.

Julia cuts in. “It’s...it’s your choice, ultimately, Quentin. But Hades sent you to us so that you could go in and...get yourself out, basically. You’re not in the regular Underworld where just anyone goes, you’re...somewhere beyond that, somewhere only you can go. Does that make sense?”

“No,” Quentin chuckles. “But what fucking does about that place?”

He goes to hug the girls again, who kiss his bearded cheeks so sweetly that it actually flusters him a little. And then he goes to Eliot. Tall, broken, but hopeful.

“Give my love to Margo when you see her,” Quentin says.

“I will.”

Quentin goes in for one last hug, and Eliot surprises him by holding his face and kissing him gently on the lips. It’s chaste, but lingering. Sweet.

A goodbye. A hello.

“You took such good care of me, sweetheart,” Quentin whispers, as Eliot leans their foreheads together. “Let him take care of you too, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

They pull away, and Quentin smiles. “The grandkids say hello.”

Eliot smiles back.

The four of them join hands and close their eyes to do the spell, and Quentin opens them to a gray, blank world, with Hades there to greet him. Hades takes him by the arm and explains the terms as they walk. 

Quentin accepts, and walks through a door of light. 

Standing before him in a familiar wood, young and short-haired and wan, dressed in a hoodie and jeans, is a reflection of himself.

“Jesus, is that really what my beard looked like?”

“I take it you were expecting me, then.” Quentin approaches his younger self, who's about an inch taller without all the arthritis.

“Kinda. Something tells me this is your afterlife more than it’s mine.”

“Went and got yourself killed before your time, did you?”

“Okay, you are _so_ not allowed to yell at me, I’m literally you.”

“We’re always the hardest on ourselves,” Quentin says, stepping closer. “It’s an exchange,” he explains. “Hades is owed our soul either way, and, well... I’m an eighty-three-year-old geezer with heart problems. I lived my life, I died in bed. You, I don’t know _what_ you got into, but...get back up there, young man.”

“Yeah, no, that’s--that’s fine with me. Um…” His younger self looks up at him, a sad set to his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth. “He’s there waiting for you. Your Eliot.”

Quentin’s heart, despite not really being there, thumps. “So’s yours, kiddo.”

Younger Quentin scoffs, rolling his eyes, looking _far_ too much like Teddy. “Yeah, maybe that one won’t be as mad at me for literally saving his life.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he chuckles. Getting an idea, he plucks the two wedding rings from each finger and presses them into his younger self’s hand. “Here. He’s not ready yet, but. For when he is, yeah?”

His young self softens, smiles, and pockets the rings. “Yeah.”

He hears it then--not too far beyond the trees, _his_ Eliot, with the sound of decades in his voice. “Q? Where’d you get to?”

Quentin takes his own hand, and shakes it. “Time’s a gift. Don’t waste too much of it.”

“I’ll try.” The young man, the future-past-will-be-again Quentin, looks over his older self’s shoulder, spotting something behind him. “I gotta go, I think. See you later, I guess?”

“Goodbye. Take care of yourself.”

The young man nods, and walks out the way the old man had come in.

And Quentin, a once-and-future man of eighty-three and twenty-six, dead but not gone, walks forward through the trees, where his home is waiting for him.

_Oh my love, don't cry when I'm gone  
_ _I will lift you up, the air in your lungs  
_ _And when you reach for me, dance in the darkness_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The quotes before & after are from "Dance in the Graveyards" by Delta Rae, an apt but kinda cheesy song that I love very much.
> 
> The title took me a while to think of, and in fiddling with it, I saw that Page's story's title was a quote from Jeremiah 29:11. In the King James, "to give you hope and a future" (which is from the NIV) is instead translated as "to give you an expected end". I find it interesting, the different implications they both have despite being from the same exact line.


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